Xamonas Chegwe
03-09-2006, 04:08 PM
Here's a story that I wrote for Stan's Admiral Benbow. I thought I'd stick a copy here too. It's just something I threw together in a couple of hours. (Not one of my infamous works-in-progress!) but I hope some of you might enjoy it.
In the year of 1550, a child, the youngest of 7 boys, was born to a seafaring family in Plymouth. When he was only 5 years old, his father, second mate aboard the Deuce o’ Diamonds, was lost at sea while standing the second dog watch en route to the New World; some say he was washed overboard by a freak wave, others that he had an argument with one of his shipmates, others still that he was seized by a sea monster in the dead of night. Whatever the explanation, the loss put such a fear of the sea into his youngest son, that he swore he would never set foot onto so much as a rowboat, much less a ship. I would tell you the childs name; but to this day it is said in Plymouth town to be the very worst of luck to so much as whisper it. I shall refer to him only as,
The Lad That Wouldn’t Go To Sea.
True to his word, at the age of 13, the lad shunned the nautical life and was apprenticed to a ship’s chandler, where he set to learning the art of trading in sailcloth, ropes and all of the myriad supplies that a ship of the day would need for a voyage. But there were those that knew his father and brothers that muttered that he was wasting his life as a shopkeeper, that he should take to the sea like a real man. These mutters grew to catcalls and insults, which grew in turn to arguments and fistfights. Thus the lad, out of necessity as much as anything, grew into a fine figure of a man and a match for anyone in a fight by the age of 16.
His troubles weren’t over though. There were less that dared to challenge him to his face, but plenty that still muttered and this time the mutterings turned into a plot. The plot came to fruition in 1568, when the lad was still a week shy of his 18th birthday and the conflict in the Spanish Main was at it’s height. Men were wanted to man ships to plunder the Spanish treasure that was so abundent in that part of the world. So it was, that one August night, as he was drinking a glass of ale in the Threemaster tavern, someone slipped a potion into his glass and he awoke on board the Queen’s Prize, already the best part of two days towards the Main.
From the moment that he awoke, the movement of the ship had him retching and puking. The experienced hands laughed; they’d seen this many times and knew he’d soon settle down once he got his sea-legs. But days passed. And those days joined to make a week without the young man showing any sign of acclimatising to the unfamiliar situation. Everything he ate was ejected minutes later. He could take no more water than that needed to wet his lips and tongue without his stomach turning itself inside out yet again. The ship’s doctor was at a loss to explain it, “If only I had some leeches.” He’d say, “that would fix ‘im! Bad blood’s what it is, mark my words.”
All day and all night he lay on his bunk and moaned and dry-heaved. The other sailors grew so tired of being disturbed by his constant illness, that they slung a hammock for him in the bilge, squeezed between piles of tools and brick-a-brack and in the company of the ship’s rats, 2 feet above the foul bilgewater and a similar disance below the low ceiling. The captain resolved to put this useless seaman ashore at the first land they encountered.
For a further two days he lay there, growing weak with hunger, thirst and lack of sleep. He tried his hardest to eat what he was given but with the usual results. Eventually, a storm blew up. The wooden ship was tossed and thrown from one side to the other. The water in the bilges was splashed over the lad; a couple of times he was thrown from his hammock into it by the force of a particularly violent lurch. When the storm passed, the ship was becalmed, the mountains of water that had risen twice the height of the ship were now a flat, glasslike plain that stretched to the horizon. Seafaring folk being what they are, it wasn’t long before the lad in the Queen’s Prize’s bilge was blamed for their misfortunes. He was looked upon as some kind of latter-day Jonah; to be honest, his filthy, emaciated, unshaven appearance did little to dispel the rumours.
That is when something strange happened. As the boy lay there, his stomach still turning cartwheels despite the motionless ship, he heard a knocking. At first he thought it came from the trapdoor hatch above him but as he turned his head to see, he realised that it came from the opposite direction completely, from outside! Frozen with fear, he moved towards the sound and heard a low, dreadful voice. The kind of voice that a man with lungs and mouth filled with seawater would have. The voice of a drownded corpse. That wasn’t the worst of it though, not nearly the worst. As he got used to the unearthly vocalisation he realised with a piercing shaft of terror that the voice was calling his name!
His fear rising and forcing him to action, he leapt out of the hammock and scrambled up the short ladder and through the hatch. He tried to explain what he had just heard to the men in the crew-quarters above but they laughed, called him a fool and kicked him back down into the bilgewater below. He tried to climb out again, crying, “You must listen! It’s God’s truth I tell you!” but they slammed the hatch shut on his fingers and he heard them drag something heavy over it. He hammered on the underside of the trapdoor for a while , his bloodied hands leaving red stains on the wood, but to no avail. At last he stopped banging. But the banging didn’t stop with him. It came from the ship’s hull as before. The terrible voice called out again, crying his name with a sound like heavy stones moving against each other on the seabed.
“Let me in!” it cried, slowly and mournfully, “It’s so cold out here.”
“Who are you?” He yelled back, surprised at the hoarse, rasping, high-pitched sound of his own voice. “In God’s name, who are you?”
“You know who I am.” Came the reply. And he did. He knew it very well indeed.
“How can I let you in?” He asked the voice. But he knew the answer to that too.
For the first time since waking nearly two weeks earlier, the lad didn’t feel sick at all, as he sloshed through the filthy suds of bilgewater, over to the pile of tools thrown against the bulkhead by the force of the storm, selected a large fire-axe, and proceeded to open a passage through the hull for his father.
And that's my tale. Believe it or not, it's your choice. But the Queen’s Prize was sunk with the loss of all but 7 of her hands, 800 miles east of Bermuda. To this day, no Plymouth man will enter the bilge of a ship anywhere within 100 miles of the place. And even in this age of steel ships, there is a law against keeping an axe in the bilge of any vessel!
In the year of 1550, a child, the youngest of 7 boys, was born to a seafaring family in Plymouth. When he was only 5 years old, his father, second mate aboard the Deuce o’ Diamonds, was lost at sea while standing the second dog watch en route to the New World; some say he was washed overboard by a freak wave, others that he had an argument with one of his shipmates, others still that he was seized by a sea monster in the dead of night. Whatever the explanation, the loss put such a fear of the sea into his youngest son, that he swore he would never set foot onto so much as a rowboat, much less a ship. I would tell you the childs name; but to this day it is said in Plymouth town to be the very worst of luck to so much as whisper it. I shall refer to him only as,
The Lad That Wouldn’t Go To Sea.
True to his word, at the age of 13, the lad shunned the nautical life and was apprenticed to a ship’s chandler, where he set to learning the art of trading in sailcloth, ropes and all of the myriad supplies that a ship of the day would need for a voyage. But there were those that knew his father and brothers that muttered that he was wasting his life as a shopkeeper, that he should take to the sea like a real man. These mutters grew to catcalls and insults, which grew in turn to arguments and fistfights. Thus the lad, out of necessity as much as anything, grew into a fine figure of a man and a match for anyone in a fight by the age of 16.
His troubles weren’t over though. There were less that dared to challenge him to his face, but plenty that still muttered and this time the mutterings turned into a plot. The plot came to fruition in 1568, when the lad was still a week shy of his 18th birthday and the conflict in the Spanish Main was at it’s height. Men were wanted to man ships to plunder the Spanish treasure that was so abundent in that part of the world. So it was, that one August night, as he was drinking a glass of ale in the Threemaster tavern, someone slipped a potion into his glass and he awoke on board the Queen’s Prize, already the best part of two days towards the Main.
From the moment that he awoke, the movement of the ship had him retching and puking. The experienced hands laughed; they’d seen this many times and knew he’d soon settle down once he got his sea-legs. But days passed. And those days joined to make a week without the young man showing any sign of acclimatising to the unfamiliar situation. Everything he ate was ejected minutes later. He could take no more water than that needed to wet his lips and tongue without his stomach turning itself inside out yet again. The ship’s doctor was at a loss to explain it, “If only I had some leeches.” He’d say, “that would fix ‘im! Bad blood’s what it is, mark my words.”
All day and all night he lay on his bunk and moaned and dry-heaved. The other sailors grew so tired of being disturbed by his constant illness, that they slung a hammock for him in the bilge, squeezed between piles of tools and brick-a-brack and in the company of the ship’s rats, 2 feet above the foul bilgewater and a similar disance below the low ceiling. The captain resolved to put this useless seaman ashore at the first land they encountered.
For a further two days he lay there, growing weak with hunger, thirst and lack of sleep. He tried his hardest to eat what he was given but with the usual results. Eventually, a storm blew up. The wooden ship was tossed and thrown from one side to the other. The water in the bilges was splashed over the lad; a couple of times he was thrown from his hammock into it by the force of a particularly violent lurch. When the storm passed, the ship was becalmed, the mountains of water that had risen twice the height of the ship were now a flat, glasslike plain that stretched to the horizon. Seafaring folk being what they are, it wasn’t long before the lad in the Queen’s Prize’s bilge was blamed for their misfortunes. He was looked upon as some kind of latter-day Jonah; to be honest, his filthy, emaciated, unshaven appearance did little to dispel the rumours.
That is when something strange happened. As the boy lay there, his stomach still turning cartwheels despite the motionless ship, he heard a knocking. At first he thought it came from the trapdoor hatch above him but as he turned his head to see, he realised that it came from the opposite direction completely, from outside! Frozen with fear, he moved towards the sound and heard a low, dreadful voice. The kind of voice that a man with lungs and mouth filled with seawater would have. The voice of a drownded corpse. That wasn’t the worst of it though, not nearly the worst. As he got used to the unearthly vocalisation he realised with a piercing shaft of terror that the voice was calling his name!
His fear rising and forcing him to action, he leapt out of the hammock and scrambled up the short ladder and through the hatch. He tried to explain what he had just heard to the men in the crew-quarters above but they laughed, called him a fool and kicked him back down into the bilgewater below. He tried to climb out again, crying, “You must listen! It’s God’s truth I tell you!” but they slammed the hatch shut on his fingers and he heard them drag something heavy over it. He hammered on the underside of the trapdoor for a while , his bloodied hands leaving red stains on the wood, but to no avail. At last he stopped banging. But the banging didn’t stop with him. It came from the ship’s hull as before. The terrible voice called out again, crying his name with a sound like heavy stones moving against each other on the seabed.
“Let me in!” it cried, slowly and mournfully, “It’s so cold out here.”
“Who are you?” He yelled back, surprised at the hoarse, rasping, high-pitched sound of his own voice. “In God’s name, who are you?”
“You know who I am.” Came the reply. And he did. He knew it very well indeed.
“How can I let you in?” He asked the voice. But he knew the answer to that too.
For the first time since waking nearly two weeks earlier, the lad didn’t feel sick at all, as he sloshed through the filthy suds of bilgewater, over to the pile of tools thrown against the bulkhead by the force of the storm, selected a large fire-axe, and proceeded to open a passage through the hull for his father.
And that's my tale. Believe it or not, it's your choice. But the Queen’s Prize was sunk with the loss of all but 7 of her hands, 800 miles east of Bermuda. To this day, no Plymouth man will enter the bilge of a ship anywhere within 100 miles of the place. And even in this age of steel ships, there is a law against keeping an axe in the bilge of any vessel!